The recently releasedBloodborne PSXhas quickly picked up a following among fans of the original title, thanks in part to it being the only new content coming from the standalone game sinceThe Old HuntersDLC. However, only days after thisBloodbornedemake released to massive success, players have already begun cracking through every nook and cranny to shave down their playtime.
One player in particular who goes by the name Distortion2 online has come from the standardDark SoulsandBloodbornespeedrun community to conquer this newest beast in a shockingly short amount of time. This is after Distortion2’s initial run of the game that took a little over four hours to complete, with much of that time being to gush over returning to a low-resolution version of Yharnam.
RELATED:Bloodborne and Cyberpunk 2077 Figma Delayed
The time that Distortion2 managed in this initial routing to defeate every boss was 14:19, roughly five percent of the total time spent playing in the initial playthrough of the game. Several other casual playthroughs found online ofBloodborne PSXhave hovered around two to five hours, depending on how thorough each player was at reading through item descriptions or exploring the familiar setting. So, even on the lower end of the spectrum, Distortion2 has cut the time down by well over three quarters of what the average player would expect from a single attempt at the game.
A large part of the time saves in this run come specifically from a variant of techniques that actually persist from speedruns of the originalBloodborne, such as the C.O.O.K.I.E. skip from very early in the game. This requires steady placement of the player at an elevator that leads to the boss Gascoigne that can normally only be opened after traveling through the sewers, but can be circumvented by forcing an enemy to clip through the closed gate. The effect is that it places the player right in front of one of the main bosses without having to traverse through one of the longer levels and unlockBloodborne’s required keysneeded for progression.
With theBloodbornedemake still as new as it is, this sub fifteen all-bosses run will likely be the start of an arms race of sorts as more and more speedrunners honing in on the route, experimenting with new glitches, and eventually shaving the time down even further. For perspective, Distortion2 held the first sub hour all-bosses run of the originalBloodborneroughly two months before the time of this writing and is now in fifth place on the leader board as even that record has been shortened. With players already breaking downBloodborne PSXfor mods, it likely won’t be long before new exploits are discovered in the code that will continue to bring the time for the route down by seconds or even minutes at a time.
